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NASA's Commercial Plans for Kennedy Space Center
coondoggie writes "Whether or not NASA launches two or three more shuttle missions, NASA's venerable hub of operations, the Kennedy Space Center will need a new mission. That's why NASA today said it was looking to morph the center's unique space rocket facilities into a new more commercial role after the shuttles stop flying. While its facilities would likely rise far above others, NASA could find some competition in any commercial launch venture."
Hopefully they don't intend it to continue on simply as a history tourist attraction. When I visited last summer, the "rocket garden" left me sad. Everything was terribly rusted and so on.
Yes. It is prime for launching because among all spots in the continental United States, it is: 1. Close to the equator - good to achieve equatorial orbits 2. On the eastern seaboard. Orbits typically go from West to East. So from there, they can launch to the east, and be going over the ocean, so if anything goes wrong, well, it's over the ocean Probably also because of mild weather, year-round, too.
If you RTFA, it sounds like how cash-strapped British Lords open up parts of their country estates to provide a little cash-flow to finance maintenance and repairs. Or like some kind of NASA garage sale. At any rate, it doesn't sound like NASA is planning on launching anything there real soon.
So if you want to get yourself into space, learn Russian. Ha! It's like the Tortoise and the Hare Space Race . . . congratulations, Russia, in the long run, you have won.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Probably also because of mild weather, year-round, too.
Well, except for the hurricanes.
But the weather, at least, is generally pretty warm, so you don't usually have to watch out for frozen o-rings. Usually.
It's a shame that NASA has to play into commercialism to stay afloat. Back in the 60's when we were racing to the moon NASA got all the money they needed, but once that was won the well dried up. Like Tom Hanks said in Apollo 13 answering a question about why funding should continue after having already beaten the Russians: Imagine if Christopher Columbus came back from the New World, and no one returned in his footsteps.
NASA needs a new mission alright, but it needs to include more trips into space and not selling toy shuttles and rides on roller coasters.
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Time to stencil "Abandon In Place" on Pad 39A, as has been done with older unused pads at Kennedy. Maybe put in a Son et lumière (show)", like the Pyramids. Future generations will come to look at the ruins.
NASA is no more geared to commercial spaceflight than Red Bull's Formula 1 team is geared to making SUVs. NASA is, however, geared towards research and design, non-terrestrial physical sciences, deep space communications, etc.
Specialists are capable of going further in a specific field than any generalist. It would be suicide for them to try and compete with fly-by-night rocket groups that can launch satellites from disused oil rigs. It is seriously doubtful they could seriously battle for the LEO passenger market, or even with the Russians on the millionaires-in-space front. Frankly, I don't think they should.
NASA should not go commercial. They should invest more on ion drive research (how else will we get TIE fighters?), more on reliable landers (reusable spacecraft and/or colonies won't be possible until we improve the reliability aspect), more on deep space missions (commercial vendors won't bother mining asteroids until we find asteroids that we can profitably reach and mine - nickle isn't nearly valuable enough), more on alternative launch technologies (turbine-assisted ramjets, ski-jump ramps, cannon-assisted ramjets - all areas NASA is working on or have done), more on computational fluid dynamics (it's bad enough designing aircraft for atmospheres you can actually test in).
These are areas where the commercial value is next to zero until AFTER the results are in. The private sector won't invest in this stuff. Or if it does, not nearly enough. But the private sector can do bugger all until those results are indeed in.
NASA should be devolved from the Government, much in the same way the BBC is devolved from the British Government (via charter and as a source of funding but not under the control of nor under the sole funding of), but it should not be privatised or seek to use commerce to make the gap between what it needs and what scraps the politicians will give it after funding military escapades.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It is also located along Buckminster Fuller's "Dymaxion Equator", a great circle which passes over minimal land area, primarily North America and Africa. This means minimal land area over which an "oops" can fall onto inhabited areas when a launch fails to reach orbit.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
except for all the raw materials that we will need to continue onward. all those rare earth metals? guess what they can be found on other planets too.
For all we know there could major deposits of the rare minerals on mars. The real trick is getting it, and getting cheap enough to be useful.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Open immigration to large numbers of people able to work, with strong preferences for those with higher levels of education, while there is space and infrastructure to fit more people. Create free or low-cost public knowledge-level tests for all subjects, and create a public record of all documented skills. Campaign for reduction of imports of everything, balanced trade levels, and for self-reliance, for all countries. Create lots of stimulus for people to study constantly throughout life. Promote the idea that you should consume only what you need, not be wasteful or greedy, and produce as much as you can. Create neighborhood citizen councils, with large powers to decide on what happens in their neighborhoods, emphasizing communications, work, health and education, and excluding only the promotion of violence or discriminatory actions. Propose laws requiring all government employees, officials and their families to use only public services, especially in health and education, available to all people of all income levels. Require everyone to participate in some level of civic life. Create tax laws balancing property levels to a max proportion of 1000-to-1 for wealthy-to-poverty levels.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Don't like us strip mining the moon? Well come on up and do something about it beeotches!
And realistically, at this point in the game, I foresee absolutely nothing that would be exported back to Mutha Eurth except information and energy. Anything you build out there is most likely going to be local support infrastructure or outward looking.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Plenty of S-Prize type competitions happening now. They may have some creative and efficient approaches to the space industry. Then they may not beat NASA. I fear the 2% astronaut fatality rate will sour private space travel when the first disaster happens.
if I take some gold and put it in a huge tank of air, I could then say there is so much more air in there than the gold, that the gold is not relevant. That is obviously false. The only thing that matters is the cost effectiveness of going and getting it.
Along those lines, there is a *lot* more stuff, just in our local solar system than there is on earth itself. So drop the "ratio" argument.
Now is it cost effective to go get it?
*That* is a reasonable question.
There are of course other possible reasons to go to space (other than getting stuff to make profit) such as science experiments, perceived need to colonise, etc but I sense that those are out of scope for your argument.
I agree with everything you wrote, and I must add that Florida is absolutely not the best place for a commercial launch site.
The most interesting orbit for commercial launches is the geosynchronous orbit over the equator. The highest cost, by far, in a launch for GEO is inclination control. The added fuel a satellite needs to compensate for inclination in a launch from Florida costs about as much as a complete launch from an equatorial position. Launching from Florida doubles the cost, it's as simple as that.
Okay, this might be flamebait, but the most economic way for the US to get into the commercial space business would be to invade Somalia. That would mean great savings in insurance against piracy for shipping in the Indian Ocean and would allow for the construction of a nice space center right on the equator with thousands of miles of eastwards ocean range. Why not a combined NASA/Pentagon operation?